In sawmill or lumber mill, transportation of the lumbers requires the use of conveyors. Usually, the lumbers emerge from the mill in random order on a feeding conveyor. Certain given stages of the transformation process require that the lumbers be regularly spaced apart on a conveyor. It is therefore necessary to provide a system for transferring the lumbers from the feeding conveyor to another conveyor such that the lumbers are regularly spaced thereon. In order to be efficacious, lumber transfer systems should allow handling and transfer of any type, size and shape of lumbers such as stem, saw log, wood plank, beam and the like. Furthermore, they should allow to attain high transferring rate of lumbers. In fact, the efficiency of a lumber mill or the like depends greatly on the production rate attainable. The number of lumbers transferred per minute from one conveyor to another is a factor affecting greatly the production rate of lumber mills. Conventional lumber transfer systems do not allow to reach high speeds. Or, if they do, as for the lug loader described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,869,360, for example, they do not allow handling of different types of lumber.